A conference call is a telephone call between two or more callers or users (referred to herein as a group of participants) at geographically distributed locations, which allows each participant to be able to speak to, and listen to, other participant(s) simultaneously. A conference call among a plurality of participants can be conducted via a voice conference bridge or centralized server, which connects numerous endpoint devices (VoIP devices or PSTN telephones) associated with the participants using appropriate communication protocols and mixes the various incoming voice streams from the plurality of participants either at the endpoint devices or at the conference bridge.
A Web conferencing tool enables the group of participants to organize and attend meetings online during a conference call by allowing a presenter in the group of the participants at the conference call to run a computer software application (also referred to herein as the application) or to present a material via a hosting device and share the application or material with the rest of the group (the viewers) to view in real time. For non-limiting examples, such Web conferencing tool enables the presenter to perform live demonstrations in real time, collaborate documents with colleagues, and provide training to customers and employees.
During the Web conferencing, an outgoing audio stream of the material being presented and/or the application being run via the hosting device (also referred to herein as the computer audio) may often need to be transmitted to the conference in addition to, and in separation from, an outgoing voice conference audio stream of the presenter or viewer speaking at the conference call (also referred to herein as the presenter or viewer audio, respectively). In the meantime, an incoming voice audio stream needs to be received from the rest of the group speaking at the conference call (also referred to herein as the voice conference audio). When there are more than one person need to listen to and/or to speak at the conference call at the same location as the presenter or the viewer, the presenter or viewer may have to “open up” the conference call by using a separate speaker and a microphone associated with the hosting device instead of an integrated headset w/ microphone attached his/her head. Consequently, the computer audio may leak from the speaker to the microphone together with the presenter or viewer audio, causing deterioration in the audio quality of the conference call. Conversely, it is important to make sure that the two outgoing audio streams—the computer audio and the presenter or viewer audio are transmitted separately by the hosting device without interfering with one another.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.